‘Badly, Elizabeth.’ Tomorrow Rajah was her job.
It came out in a fierce whisper. ‘What happens tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow we find Rajah. And you get those bullets out of him.’
She closed her eyes in dread-filled frustration. ‘I know that. But what about Lonnogan? And Forsythe?’
He did not lift his eyes from the fire.
‘Lonnogan won’t be around much longer, Elizabeth. He’s not allowed in here. Eric Bradman will see he’s kicked out. And Forsythe doesn’t want him in here either. Everything’s loaded against Lonnogan. This place will be safe again in a couple of days, Dr. Johnson.’
She stared at him incredulously. She could not believe he thought that. And God knew she wanted to believe him …
‘And Forsythe? What are you going to do about him?’
‘We needn’t worry about Forsythe for the time being, Dr. Johnson. Charlie and his Cherokees will be there in the morning, waiting for him when he comes back to pick up the spoor of the elephants.’
Of course … Forsythe would have to come back to where he left off. For a moment she felt her bludgeoned hopes rise.
‘But you can’t keep that up forever …’
He looked at her in the flickering firelight. The animals were sitting attentively; they could tell from their tones and the tension in the air that their fates were being discussed.
‘I won’t have to keep it up forever. Operation Noah is going to stop.’ Then he gave her a grim smile. ‘Now stop worrying. I’ll do the worrying; you go to sleep. We’ve got a long way to go tomorrow.’
She sat there rigidly, eyes closed. And she wanted to cry it:
Oh hold me. Please just hold me.
sixty-eight
Before dawn Big Charlie and his men were near Hazel Creek, where Dumbo had been darted, waiting for Forsythe to come back to pick up Jamba’s spoor.
The self-appointed liberation team from Cherokee was also ready. When the first pink came into the east, and the Operation Noah helicopter rose slowly over the dark foothills, navigational lights getting smaller, over the fence they swarmed.
They raced silently between the tents toward the stockade. Ambrose Jones was waiting for them. In six breathless minutes Dumbo was free. He went lumbering down the avenue of tents, gleefully herded toward the big hole in the fence that had been cut in the night. Dumbo was out into the wilderness before anybody knew it.
That dawn, the four thousand Indians from Cherokee and Oklahoma arrived in Washington, D.C. They left their vehicles outside the city, and they began to walk into the capital. They formed a column over two miles long, dressed in tatters, holding four thousand crosses aloft. They were singing the new American ballad, ‘The Trail of Tears,’ and they were being herded along by men cracking whips and dressed up as soldiers.
Television men were everywhere. Marlon Brando was there and a dozen other celebrities who had rallied to Eric Bradman’s call. They marched on Capitol Hill where Chief Nathaniel Owle made his speech. It was the best speech of his life, bringing tears to the eyes and shame to the breast, and his huge audience roared their applause.
Then they marched on the White House.
Twenty thousand people marched, led by Chief Owle and Eric Bradman, singing ‘The Great Free Smoky Mountains.’ They marched up Pennsylvania Avenue like an army and formed up around the iron railings of the White House until the presidential compound was completely surrounded. Then began a chant that rose up over the city: The President …the President …We want to see the President!
Two hours before first light, Davey and Elizabeth left the mine to go back to Rajah’s spoor. Davey had shot a boar the day before and hung it in a tree. He fed it to the lions to make them stay behind—they were safer around their den. But the other animals followed Davey and Elizabeth.
They were half a mile downstream when Davey noticed Sultan following them. He sighed, but decided to do nothing until it was light.
It was still before dawn when Davey stopped, two miles above the cabin.
‘Rajah ran up this way.’
She looked about in the darkness, ‘How can you tell we’re there?’
‘I know.’ He sat down, crosslegged; she slumped against a tree. The gorillas huddled together. Sultan lurked in the darkness, pretending he wasn’t there.
‘We’ll hear Forsythe’s helicopter as soon as it gets light. Other side that ridge.’
‘And we’ll have Lonnogan and his men here at first light too.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because there’s only one way for Lonnogan to find me, and that’s to follow my spoor which I left yesterday when I ran away from him. That’ll lead him all over the place. Back to the stream below the mine. Then he’ll lose it. We’re a full day ahead of Lonnogan. We tan keep a day ahead of him forever.’
Elizabeth prayed that he was right. That Lonnogan wouldn’t follow Rajah’s spoor too.
At last it began to get light. Davey walked over to Sultan. The tiger was behind a bush, looking studiously away, with one ear cocked. When he heard Davey approaching he feigned intense interest in the middle distance. Davey put his hand on his head. ‘Sultan? Back. Go back.’
Sultan looked glassily ahead, ears slanted.
‘Sultan. Go back.’
Not Sultan. He sat there, with a severe attack of deafness. He wasn’t going to go back to those lions if he had a chance of sticking with his keeper. Davey crouched and turned the big striped face toward him. Sultan looked away out of the corners of his eyes.
‘Sultan, I can’t worry about you today. You’re much better off with Tommy and Kitty and Princess. Now … go back.’
Sultan didn’t move.
Davey stood up with a sigh and walked back to Elizabeth. ‘I’’m losing my touch.’ He said softly to Sam: ‘Sultan … see him off, Sam!’
Sam looked up, as if his master had gone out of his mind. Then he glanced apprehensively in Sultan’s direction.
‘See him off!’
Sam stood up reluctantly, looked at Davey again, saw no reprieve, uttered a nervous huff to get himself warmed up for the formidable task, glanced at Davey once more, then worriedly threw himself into ferocity. The hair stood up on his neck, and he bounded at Sultan’s bush, giving tongue. Sultan whirled around with a snarl, ears back, claws ready. Sam nearly fell over himself in braking, then Sultan turned and ran. He went bounding through the undergrowth, and Sam went after him at a safe distance, barking furiously. After fifty yards Sultan slowed down to a lope, and Sam slowed too, listening hopefully for his master’s recall.
Within ten minutes Davey had found Rajah’s spoor. He whistled for Sam.
He started up the steep mountain, followed by Elizabeth and the animals. The spoor was as easy as a trolley track to follow, blundering footprints and plenty of blood.
sixty-nine
With the sunrise Big Charlie heard the helicopter.
Three hundred yards away was the place where Dumbo had finally collapsed. In the undergrowth, on both sides, hid five Cherokee men. The helicopter droned closer and closer; finally it was chopping overhead in an arc.
The rope ladders unfurled, and Forsythe climbed out, followed by his black trackers. Frank Hunt, Jonas Ford, and some television men followed.
Within a minute the black men had found the spoor. Forsythe examined it, and they set off, Ben and Samson leading the way. Big Charlie and his Cherokees crept after them.
Forsythe was following Jamba’s spoor, not Rajah’s. She had been darted and would therefore have moved more slowly, and she would have collapsed for several hours in the night. Rajah had been wounded, and he would have run, probably all night.
They followed her spoor for half a mile, down the mountain; then it turned drunkenly and headed back up the mountain.
So Forsythe, and his trackers did not cross the ridge into the Garden of Eden; they did not see where Rajah had killed Kid Lonnogan. They followed Jamba’s drunken
spoor for over two miles up the mountain; then they noticed a change. The spoor became firmer, but it still headed resolutely up the mountain.
‘Ben?’
Ben looked at his master and nodded at the spoor. ‘This elephant is recovering.’
‘This elephant’—Forsythe pointed to the top of the Great Smoky Mountains—‘has run up this valley to the Appalachian Trail and over the other side.’
Forsythe turned to Jonas Ford.
‘If we fly to the top in the helicopter, we’ll find the spoor up there, where it crosses the trail. It’ll save us a whole day. If we don’t find it, we can always come back here and continue.’ He called for his radio.
Big Charlie and his men were left standing. Charlie did not understand what was happening until the helicopter was hovering overhead again, and Forsythe and his men were already on the ladder. It was too late. He beckoned to his Cherokees feverishly.
‘They’re going to look for the female’s spoor at the top of the mountains. One of us must stay here in case they fail and come back. Two must go back to the male elephant’s spoor. Forsythe will return there to start tracking Rajah, either later today, or tomorrow. The rest of us must follow Jamba’s spoor on foot …’
Rajah had four bullets embedded in his skull, seven lodged in his ribs. The agony thudded with each step, but he kept on, wheezing and snorting, fleeing from the men who had tried to kill him. It had been after midnight when he came toiling up Thunderhead Mountain. His exhaustion was as bad as his pain now, and he was very thirsty.
He stood in the steep forest, his trunk up, trying to smell water, blood oozing out of the bullet holes, waiting for the thudding agony in his head to settle. Then he curled back his trunk and sniffed at his head, touching the bullet holes one by one.
He groped at the forest floor and sucked up some soil. He curled up his trunk and sprayed it over the bullet holes. Again and again he did it until he had covered his wounds. Then he could do nothing more than just stand there, and endure. He was afraid of the black night forest. He wanted to raise his trunk and trumpet to Jamba, but he dared not, lest the men hear him.
With the dawn he had reached the top of Thunderhead. Below him were the valleys down to Cades Cove. He was afraid of the unknown. But he had to hide, and find water, and let his wounds heal.
In the afternoon, Davey reached the place where Rajah had tried to rest in the night.
He examined the ground, examined the foilage. Elizabeth came toiling up.
‘He stopped here for a long time,’ he said. ‘But he didn’t eat. He didn’t lie down. He hasn’t been near water yet. That’s what he’d have started looking for from here. Are you very tired?’
‘O God, yes …’
‘Okay, we’ll take a rest.’
‘Have we got time?’
‘Lonnogan’s well behind us. He’s only getting to Paw Paw Ridge now.’
But he was wrong. Lonnogan and his posse were also following the spoor of the wounded elephant. They had reasoned that that was where David Jordan would be.
Ten miles away, Forsythe had found that he was right.
Within half a mile of where his helicopter had dropped him on the Appalachian Trail, he had found Jamba’s spoor. It crossed the crest of the Great Smoky Mountains, then headed down into the wilderness of Tennessee below.
The helicopter pilot had told him of Dumbo’s escape. Jonas Ford had been incredulous, outraged. Forsythe had let go a flood of invective against America in general and the Cherokee nation in particular; then he had withdrawn into seething silence.
Now Forsythe stood on Jamba’s spoor at the top of the mountains, and he was furiously determined that by tonight there would be another elephant in that stockade at Oconaluftee.
Jamba did not know where she was.
She had blundered to the top of the mountains during the night, and when the drug had worn off she did not even know that she had crossed.
She had waited: for daylight, for Davey Jordan, for Rajah. When she had heard the helicopter, she had blundered farther down the mountain into Tennessee. After five miles she stopped, frightened of going deeper into strange territory. For a long time she stood in the deep shade, nervously sniffing the air. Eventually she began to relax.
Then the dartgun barked.
The dart smacked into her rump, and she whirled about and ran down the steep mountainside, smashing bushes flat. Then the drug hit her, and she was fighting dizziness, stumbling and straining. She crashed into a tree, but she struggled up again; she stumbled on, and on, then she collapsed into a stream.
The shock of the water brought Jamba round. She struggled up again. She labored on down the stream bed, falling, but the repeated shock of the icy water fought off the drug. She climbed out of the stream and into the forest again; she bumped into many trees, but she did not collapse again.
For two hours Forsythe followed her spoor. Then he called a halt.
‘The damn animal’s recovered! Look at that spoor.’ He turned to Ford and snapped. ‘It’s afternoon already. We might not catch up all day. She’ll be on the alert now. Samson—bring the radio.’
He crouched down and called the camp, ordering the helicopter to come back. Then he turned to Ford.
‘We’re going to split up. I’m leaving you here to follow this spoor, with Ben and Sixpence. When it gets too dark to track, camp right there and follow the spoor in the morning.’
‘Where’re you going?’ Ford demanded.
‘Back to where I shot the male elephant yesterday. While there’s still light left to track him.’
seventy
Big Charlie and his two men had been toiling up the mountain for only twenty minutes, following Jamba’s spoor and the helicopter, when they heard the dogs.
Big Charlie halted, panting, aghast. Then he heard it again, the faraway baying of a whole pack.
‘You guys carry on following this spoor!’
He turned and went running back down the valley, leaping and swerving around the trees.
Sultan had not gone back to the mine. He didn’t want any more to do with the lions than he had to. He had recognized where he was, and he made his way disconsolately toward the log cabin.
Sultan smelled the dogs before he heard them. For a moment he thought it was Sam again, that Davey had come back for him. Then he crouched; it was not Sam’s scent. He whirled and fled, leaping through the undergrowth; then all the dogs were in full cry after him, the three men from Sylva excitedly running after them.
Sultan ran flat out, head low, across the steep mount in the direction of the mine, the terror pounding in his chest. The dogs were used to this rough country, and they were gaining on him, then he threw himself at a tree trunk. He started scrambling upward, and a dog got his tail.
Sultan clawed for all his might against the wrench, and he roared down at the furious mass of leaping jaws. Then another dog got his hind paw. His leg skidded, and he scrambled with all his strength, dragging the dogs with him; then he came crashing down into the furious mass of dogs. They leaped all over him, onto his back and hindquarters. Sultan roared, twisted, swiped, and tore off the side of a dog’s face; another dog leaped on his back, and Sultan twisted again and swiped and missed; then he spun on another dog and clawed his head open, bounded up, and threw himself at the nearest tree trunk. He scrambled desperately, and was just out of reach. He clung with all his might, his heart thudding and ears back, with a howling moan of terror. His legs trembled, and he tried to claw up higher; then his way was blocked by a branch. Old Sultan just clung, fangs bared, trying to rest, his legs frantically wrapped around the trunk, blood all over him; and the dogs leaped up at him frenziedly. Then he saw the three men coming.
For a wild moment he thought it was Davey Jordan; then he heard them. He looked desperately up the tree for escape, and the dogs barked and leaped with redoubled excitement at the arrival of their masters.
‘Don’t spoil his head.’
The first shot rang out abo
ve the cacophony; then the gunfire opened up from three sides, as the hunters dashed to get a shot in. The bullets smashed into him and all about him, and Sultan tried to scramble up around the branch. Then a shot shattered his spine, and down he came.
With a terrified roar, into the mass of dogs, trying to twist around in mid-air to face them, scattering them in all directions. He hit the earth and tried to run, and he crashed over, and they hit him from behind, in a furious melee. Sultan tried to twist and swipe at them, but his spine was broken, and he crashed onto his side. He roared and lunged his shoulders around, trying to bite at the dogs on his back. Again and again Sultan tried, and all the time there was the barking, the jumping, the biting, the shouting, and the blood, and his heart was thudding in exhaustion. Then he could fight no more, and he just tried to drag himself across the forest floor: on his chest, ear back, moaning, his hindquarters sprawled, dragging with his forepaws, trying to heave himself toward the next tree. The dogs hurled themselves at him again, savaging with all their might; Sultan snarled and heaved himself through the undergrowth, dragging the dogs, and the hunters were shouting encouragement at them. Then his forepaws reached a tree, and he tried to haul himself up to it, and the dogs went crazy. The first man shouted, ‘See how far he gets!’
The old tiger moaned and heaved, his paws upstretched, then his exhausted forelegs could claw no more, and he just clung, howling deep in his throat, with the dogs wrenching and savaging gleefully; then there was a bellow.
‘You murdering bastards!’
A shot rang out, and Charlie’s merciful bullet smashed through Sultan’s head. Then Big Charlie was swinging his rifle furiously like a club, and astonished hunters and dogs scattered, shocked, yelping. Charlie swiped the first man across the ribs with his rifle with all his might; he bounded after the next one and swiped him across the back. The men were running, and Big Charlie fired furiously at their feet, and then over their heads as they went stumbling through the trees, and he bellowed, ‘Get out murdering bastards!’
Then the first man turned and fired, and Big Charlie jerked.
Fear No Evil Page 37